CENTURY MARK

In the early 1960s, Hershey, Pa., was known primarily for two things--Hershey Bar chocolates and Hershey Bear hockey.

Until March 2, 1962.

On that night, Wilt Chamberlain gave that sleepy little town a permanent spot on the basketball map and elevated his struggling league into a prominent spot on the sports page with one of the most spectacular individual performances in sports history. On that night, Chamberlain scored 100 points, a figure often not reached by teams today.

All of his numbers that night are staggering: 36 shots made from the field in 63 attempts, 28 free throws made in 32 attempts.

Then 25 and in his third NBA season, Chamberlain was already on the verge of one of his greatest accomplishments as he rode the team bus into Hershey that day: a season scoring average of better than 50 points a game.

But he wasn’t happy about it.

“It was toward the end of the season,” Chamberlain later told The Times, “and I remember thinking, ‘Hey Wilt, what do you do for an encore after a 50-point average? . . . I better try to cut this thing back a little bit. . . . Pass a little more, do something. Because next year, they’re gonna be asking for 60 points a game.’ ”

The 7-foot-1, 275-pound Chamberlain was already being asked to carry the NBA on his large shoulders. Still a poor third behind baseball and football in the minds of most sports fans, the league was trying to expand its fan base. That’s why Chamberlain’s Philadelphia Warriors were at the Hershey Sports Arena on the night of March 2 to play the New York Knickerbockers. Philadelphia played in Hershey about once a month to draw new fans.

Officially 4,124 were on hand that night, although in later years a hundred times that many would claim they had been there.

Chamberlain already held the league single-game scoring record, having scored 78 points against the Lakers three months earlier. But Chamberlain had required three overtimes to amass that total.

He started off on March 2 with 23 points in the first quarter and added 18 in the second to give him 41 at the half.

But Chamberlain was just warming up.

He had 28 points in the third quarter, putting him at history’s doorstep with 69 as the fourth quarter began.

Trailing, 125-106, with 12 minutes to play, the Knicks began to think about their own role in one of basketball’s most memorable nights. It was a role many of the Knicks didn’t want to play.

In 1975, Willie Naulls, a New York forward but also a friend of Chamberlain, claimed in an interview that New York Coach Eddie Donovan, less concerned with the final score than with Chamberlain’s final point total, told his players to hang onto the ball until the 24-second clock was about to expire on each possession to keep it out of the Warrior center’s hands.

The Knicks also started fouling Chamberlain’s teammates to prevent him from scoring.

“I wasn’t going to be part of that fooling around,” Naulls said. “That fouling, playing keep-away, that wasn’t basketball.”

But Chamberlain wasn’t to be denied. With little more than a minute to play, he had scored 29 points in the final quarter to give him a total of 98.

He took a shot at No. 100, but missed.

Missed again.

Finally, teammate Ted Luckenbill got the rebound and passed it to fellow Warrior Joe Ruklick.

“I was dribbling up the sideline because my man was on Wilt,” recalled Ruklick, now 61 and a reporter for the Chicago Defender. “I remember [New York guard] Richie Guerin came at me to hit me and foul me.”

There was less than a minute to play.

“Just then,” Ruklick said, “Wilt bumped the man on him, pivoted and went to basket. It was like a door opening for a second. I remember our eyes met and he said, ‘Woo’ in my direction. I had about an eighth of a second to get him the ball before Guerin hit me.

“To this day, I think of the look Wilt flashed me. It was as if he were saying, ‘If you don’t get me the ball, I will understand.’ You have to remember it was a different era and he may have thought I might have been one of those people who didn’t want to see a black man get that kind of an achievement.”

Ruklick, however, didn’t hesitate.

“I flipped him the ball as fast as I could,” he said. “Wilt was four or five feet from the basket, moving in that direction with his hands up. He caught the ball, went up without putting it on the floor and went in for an easy layup.”

Fans raced on the court. Forty-six seconds still remained to play, but the fans had seen enough. They had seen a moment that may well never be equaled.

For the record, the Warriors won the game, 169-147. Guerin had a team-high 39 points for New York. Al Attles had the second-highest point total for the Warriors with 17.

Afterward in the cramped Warrior locker room, somebody thought that perhaps the moment might be worth capturing for posterity.

A camera was readied. Near one of the benches lay a scrap of paper partially soaked by the water from one of the players toweling off after his shower. The number 100 was scribbled on the paper.

Chamberlain posed while holding it.

Then the paper was wadded up and thrown in the waste basket and everybody went back to dressing.

Although he later changed his mind, Chamberlain himself was less than impressed over his feat at the time.

“I had just done so many more things in basketball that had more meaning to me,” he said. “You get downgraded all the time because you’re a scorer. Hey, somebody’s got to put the ball in the basket.”